Moving landscapes: Film, vehicles and the travelling shot

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article maps out the cinematic usage of ‘travelling shots’, or shots created through affixing a camera to a vehicle. This article initially examines the earliest examples of such shots, the nineteenth century train-mounted ‘Phantom Rides’ that synthesized two iconic technologies of modernity, rail and film, to create a form of camera movement that demonstrated the new technologies' mastery of space. This article asks what happened to this trope of movement as prowess. To this end, using the conceptual frameworks provided by film historian Tom Gunning's concept of a ‘cinema of attractions’ and fellow film historian Charles Musser's concept of a ‘cinema of contemplation’, narrative films are analysed in relation to how the travelling shot was co-opted for thematic means. Salient travelling shots, sourced from the nineteenth century Phantom Rides to 2009s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince are used to trace the lineage of the travelling shot up into our present time. By examining how film-makers have adapted travelling shots for integration within narrative films, and accommodated such new cinematic and transport technologies as CGI and helicopters, a foundation for understanding the rhetorical impulses of travelling shots is developed.